With The Stink Over Garbage, Why Recycle?

Jim Spencer

While the governor of Virginia and the mayor of New York wage a war of words over whether the Old Domin ion should continue to be a garbage dump for the Big Apple, another question arises.

Why recycle?

If this state has enough landfill space to dispose of 1.6 million tons of New York City's solid waste each year, what am I doing digging up to my elbows in chicken bones, used Kleenex and grapefruit rinds to snag a No. 2 plastic jug that I inadvertently threw away?

Seems like I'm being played for a fool by garbage men who cash in on my conservation. They make big money hauling in garbage from New York and other states, while I make a mess in my utility room sorting junk mail and cereal boxes into separate recycling containers.

The current rash of trash talk between Gov. Jim Gilmore and Mayor Rudy Giuliani started when Waste Management announced plans to bring another 4,000 tons of New York City's garbage to Virginia each day. In his state of the state speech Tuesday, Gilmore talked about curbing imported trash. Wednesday, Giuliani fired back, saying Virginia was obliged to take New York's trash because citizens of the Commonwealth get to partake of his city's superior cultural and financial institutions.

Sounds like hizzona da maya tinks dis state is so backwards it can do no better than be a waste disposal site. Applying this reasoning let me add that besides theaters and banks, New York has some crackerjack crack houses, much better than anything Virginia can offer. And despite Giuliani's efforts to clean up Times Square, his city has more whores and dirty book stores. In the spirit of letting each place do what it does best, I say we round up all of our pushers, prostitutes and pornographers, stick 'em on a barge and float 'em up the Hudson River.

Unfortunately, shutting Rudy Giuliani up doesn't solve the problem. With its lack of regulation, Virginia encourages people in other places to see the Commonwealth as a gaping trash pit.

Virginia now ranks as the nation's second largest importer of trash, behind Pennsylvania. In addition to New York City, other states are sending us 1.4 million tons of waste a year. A string of giant landfills surrounds Hampton Roads. So the stink is not just about "New York trash." It's about Virginia's hypocrisy. When the state introduced recycling to its citizens several years ago, the reasoning was simple: Communities were running out of landfill space. If we didn't reuse our aluminum cans and cardboard boxes and glass jars, the state would soon have no place to put its trash. What a bunch of garbage that turned out to be.

In its current session, the General Assembly will consider bills to make it more expensive to dump waste in landfills. Unfortunately, federal law doesn't allow legislators to distinguish between in-state and out-of-state trash. So the squawking has begun among haulers of every type.

It's time to turn a deaf ear, a time not just to raise fees, but to lower limits. Restrict the amounts of trash landfills may accept. Virginia's leaders can lobby the United States Congress to pass a bill introduced by Virginia Sen. Chuck Robb that lets states place a special charge only on out-of-state trash. But in the end, an economy built on garbage eventually turns rotten, be it with the stench of decomposition, the threat of toxicity or the eyesores of ugliness.

It's amazing that no one besides the mayor of New York has dumped on us. We've invited everybody to do it for years.